Youngish Republican whippersnapper Ben “Friends of Hamas” Shapiro, who is an editor-at-large at the conservative Web site Breitbart, and has been serving more generally of late as the it-girl of anti-gay intolerance in the modern GOP, said today during a BBC interview that conservatives would be fine with a Holocaust-denier running a major American company.

The interview on the BBC’s “World Have Your Say” show, which I was a guest on as well, was discussing the resignation of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, following a firestorm of online protest, and protest from his own employees and board of directors, over the fact that Eich had donated $1,000 to the Proposition 8 campaign, and had supported the presidential candidacy of Republican bigot Pat Buchanan.

During the show, Shapiro also claimed, incredibly (and incorrectly), that the federal Internal Revenue Service “leaked” the fact of Eich’s Prop 8 donation, which Shapiro claims (again incorrectly) was “anonymous.”

Breitbart editor-at-large and GOP leading voice Ben Shapiro.

Proposition 8 was the successful campaign in 2008, led by the Catholic church, the religious right, and the Mormons, to repeal the right of gay couples to marry in California. Prop 8 supporters also hoped that passage of the measure would dissolve the already-performed legal marriages of 18,000 gay families, many of which had children.

Shapiro, who refers to being gay as a “lifestyle” and regularly pens anti-gay articles, began the BBC show by claiming, incorrectly, that Brendan Eich’s donation to Prop 8 was “anonymous,” and that the federal Internal Revenue Service (IRS) illegally leaked the fact of Eich’s donation:

“This guy, first of all, his donation was anonymous. It was leaked by the IRS to somebody.”

It most certainly was not. And that’s an incredibly irresponsible accusation to come from someone who has become of late the darling of the Republican party. In fact, the database containing the names, and amounts of donation, of all Proposition 8 donors has been online for years. It was made public in February of 2009, per California law.

Breitbart-editor Shapiro then went on to claim that gays were “fascists” for opposing the elevation of Eich to CEO of the company based on his anti-gay views. Interestingly, Shapiro has written articles expressing his belief that companies should be able to fire their employees simply for being gay.

So, just to reiterate: It’s okay to fire your employees for being gay, but not for being anti-gay.

That stench you’re noting isn’t “freedom.”

But let’s get back to the Holocaust, shall we? Here’s Ben Shapiro, explaining to the BBC why it is that Republicans are in favor of Holocaust-deniers running major American corporations:

“I’m Jewish. If Brendan Eich had been a Holocaust-denier, but he treated Jews decently at his company, and he had not discriminated against Jews in any of his business dealings, I’d hold exactly the same position.”

Yeah, right.

While I don’t doubt that Ben Shapiro, as a Republican Jew, has no problem working for someone who might be, say, a Hitler-sympathizer on his off-hours, I have a hard time believing that most Americans, or most Republicans for that matter, would agree. There is no way that a Holocaust-denier would ever be appointed CEO of any major American corporation, and Shapiro knows it.

It is interesting, and telling, however that conservative thought-leader Shapiro appears to have more sympathy for the employment prospects of a neo-Nazi than he does someone who is gay.

And Republicans wonder why they keep increasingly losing the gay, African-American, women and Latino vote. Perhaps they should look no farther than the neo-Nazi job creators in their midst.

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John AravosisFollow me on Twitter: @aravosis | @americablog | @americabloggay | Facebook | Instagram | Google+ | LinkedIn. John Aravosis is the Executive Editor of AMERICAblog, which he founded in 2004. He has a joint law degree (JD) and masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown; and has worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and as a stringer for the Economist. He is a frequent TV pundit, having appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline, AM Joy & Reliable Sources, among others. John lives in Washington, DC. John's article archive.

Actually, it was Ronald Reagan and his gang of willfully blind minions who allowed the HIV/AIDs epidemic to rage unchecked, thereby murdering of thousands of men, women and children to die and suffer needlessly.

It’s creeps like you who cut or denied AIDS research ’cause it killed the homos: and considered everyone else who was infected collateral damage.

judybrowni

No, you’re the perversion: of both common sense and human decency.

judybrowni

Even Satan has minions.

judybrowni

Wow, that sleaze has a particular talent: somehow making every photo of himself look as though it should be titled “Satan’s Minion.”

That Prop 8 data base was public, of course, which is what the Republicans hate about it: it gave people like me the opportunity to call local 8ate folk and berate them for sticking their noses in — and fucking with — my family’s private lives.

The one satisfaction I got out of that mess.

Joseph Wells

No offense here, but I don’t doubt him on “not caring” about the holocaust denier thing. I e-mailed into his radio program to gauge his thoughts on the Neo-Nazi presence in the Ukrainian rebellion, and he of course did not like the idea of the US siding with Neo-Nazis, but felt they were the lesser of two evils for the Ukrainian people in comparison to Putin. Kind of makes sense, when you think about it.

Bill_Perdue

Yes on 8 was losing and wouldn’t have been able to turn the tide without Obama’s widely broadcast bigotry which galvanized and sanctioned the mainly Euro American bigot vote.

We got sucker punched by Obama and then ko’d by Yes on 8.

So yes, we disagree.

Julien Pierre

You are free to lay all the responsibility Prop 8 at Obama’s feet, but I think it’s incorrect. We will just have to agree to disagree. I believe the main reason it passed was the “Yes on 8” campaign, not Obama.

truthus2

You just convinced me that I really like this Shapiro! Thanks.

vickif

As the mother of a gay son and the niece of a gay uncle I am very proud of them. They have better manners than you do.

BSORaiderErie

How’s Mozilla doing? Since they have surrounded a fence around them unless you use their garbage.I have yet to hear back from them!
OperationAmericanSpring.org
16 MAY 2014
Washington, D.C.
LET US BUILD A CHRISTIAN WEBSITES AND BROWSERS WITHOUT ANY PC BC!

BSORaiderErie

Being against Gay Marriage makes US haters? Your nuts and have been programmed by a very deviant group! Choice is just that so don’t compare it to color or sex! If there was a Saudi beheading squad sent to Hollywood they wouldn’t find 1 gay but how many Blacks are gonna go bleach themselves? None because they’re stuck aren’t they while the Gays will hide until ….. somebody saves them! Yet how many Christians have been led down the same path and they became Martyrs for their Religion their Cause which is now somewhere around 2 Billion strong! Obama has been extremely bad for America and we now know and never will Democrapts be ever trusted again except by certain groups!
OperationAmericanSpring.org
16 MAY 2014
Washington, D.C.
Because we care about America and not Political Correctness or Racism which is equating a Homosexual man and comparing him to anyone of my Black Friends! How Dare they do this comparison just like Booker T. Washington was talking about when it was his time, and it was Women and Blacks rights and Politicians used the groups. I can’t believe that Americans of any color are accepting this argument?
OperationAmericanSpring.org

wmforr

Then you are being stupid and irrational. If you heard someone you found personally offensive defend the CIA, I have no doubt you’d contribute to al Qaida.

wmforr

There is not such thing as too gay, sweetie!

wmforr

Where in the Constitution is it said the the Catholic Church has a special governmental function vis-à-vis our civil laws?

wmforr

I pray that there will be.

wmforr

You are using words that do not mean what you think they mean.

BSORaiderErie

Another great mess by the GLAAD GROUP! Once again proving to many Christians that they better get off the fence because their Silence is sending a very Negative signal being narrated by Radical Progressives that have family issues and love has very little to do with this whole thing! Facts are that because who is president and his party which have fallen hard and far and need absolutely any and all votes. Only the Democrats have these tactics and only Obama has used them daily for years now and the Unity within the US shows this! As the Democrapts attempt at changing our schools with Homosexual Agenda because the Democrats don’t consider Homosexuality as an act or ones actions but a birth defect? Every Birth Defect has either a Gene or some visual attribute but instead they compare it to being Black? Or a man or a woman but this is proven and why can it not be the same with me and My Catholic Religion? I was born Catholic like my friend’s are Black? My new motto, ” Catholic By Birth” I like it! And our initiation causes no Pain!
OperationAmericanSpring.org
16 MAY 2014
American by birth Catholic by Choice and the love of country is contagious! Check out those Military kids singing Patriotic songs without an adult unlike the democrapts that stage everything!
Stop, take it in and withhold our money!

Bill_Perdue

We were winning.

Obama played his bigot card and Yes on 8 played their Obama as bigot card. They weren’t twisting his words, they were quoting him. Read the poster below and compare it to this form his MTV broadcast “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage.”

The polls changed.

We lost. We wouldn’t have lost if Obama has kept his vile bigoted views to himself but he didn’t. It had helped him get elected before and the two evangelical ministers who helped him, Leah Daughtry (1), DNC COO and Josh Dubois (2), who ran his ‘religious’, read bigot, outreach program, with the help of rightwing bigoted scum like Rick Warren (3) and Donnie McClurkin (4) succeed in winning a lot of bigot votes, especially among catholic cultists for Obama/ And in California, Arizona and Florida, that bigotry mobilized mainly white catholics, mormons and evangelicals to vote against marriage equality.

(1) Daughtry, who chaired the 2008 Democrat convention in Denver and was head of the DNCs day to day operations for years lost a lawsuit pursued by the DNCs LGBT outreach staffer who claimed, rightly as it turned out, that her decision to fire him was based on bigotry, christian bigotry. She also used DNC money to fund anti-gay and anti-abortion groups.

(2) Dubois was rewarded by being appointed as the head of the White
House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

(3) Rick Warren got a huge career boost when Obama chose him to deliver the incantations at the Inaugural before billions. Warren went on to play a big role in the passage of anti-gay legislation in Uganda. Obama has not ordered his arrest on charges or crimes against humanity or pulled his passport.

(4) Donnie McClurkin is active in South Africa where he preaches about the need to ‘cure’ gays and lesbians and where there is a campaign of mass rapes to cure lesbians. Obama has not ordered his arrest on charges or crimes against humanity or pulled his passport.

Julien Pierre

Prop 8 was polling only around 40% before the “Yes on 8” ads started running.

I don’t remember “Yes on 8” doing those particular things twisting Obama’s words at the end like this, but I guess they did. They really stopped at nothing . Their entire campaign was so hateful, from the beginning to the end .
I am not sure you can really extrapolate from polls how much influence the last few days may have had on the result.

I think it’s unfair to blame Prop 8 primarily on Obama. “Yes on 8” had far, far more influence on the outcome. I think if they had not been funded to the extent that they were, and run such an evil campaign, Prop 8 would never have passed.

I should also ad that the “No on 8” campaign was particularly incompetent. As an ancedote, I gave them $1000, and offered 5 times as much if they would just feature same-sex couples in some of their ads. They never did.

Prop 8 was a travesty of democracy in so many ways.
The majority should never have been allowed to vote on the minority rights – Prop 8 should not have been on the ballot.
So many campaign donations to “Yes on 8” were kept secret for the longest time.
So much undue influence from the Mormon church, violating separation of Church and state.

Bill_Perdue

Yes and no. Yes it was the bigot campaign and no they wouldn’t have won without the help of Obama and the cowardly (as usual) Democrats who remained silent about Obama’s disgusting bigotry.

According to the California Field polls for the summer and early autumn of 2008 we were winning if only by a few points. Then Obama went on MTV and attended the bigotfest of his BBF Rick Warren to spew his violent bigoted “gawd’s in the mix’. Yes on 8 grabbed it an ran with hundreds of last minute commercials and who knows how many millions of mailers, doorknob cutouts, leaflets and front yard/window posters. The California Field polls for the period just before the election showed a last minute shift and we lost because of the bigots that Yes on 8 and Obama mobilized and empowered.

Julien Pierre

Honestly, I think the hateful campaign of “Yes on 8” is what caused it to pass.
Do you remember it ?

I don’t know if a more forceful denunciation of Prop 8 by Obama would have changed the outcome of the Prop 8 vote. Maybe it would have. It might have also cost him his election. Who knows ? It was clearly a political calculation. We know Obama was for same-sex marriage in 1996, against in 2008, and for in 2012.

Bill_Perdue

The problem was that the California Democrats, so call liberals, never took
the time to denounce Obama’s disgusting bigoted stance, the pools flipped, we
went from winning to losing and it was an unexpected victory for the bigots, who
were galvanized by this:

Matthew

“There is a distinction of difference here.” (Only if you’re too laughably dishonest to admit that a mob of fascistic, closed-minded, angry people drove the man out of his job for having the same opinion that Obama had until 2012, which is the same position held by the presumptive Democrat party nominee, HRClinton, until just last year. If you voted for Obama, may I ask why, given that he was opposed to gay marriage in 2008?)

Max_1

I think in the BBC interview the take away is:
DON’T LET THE BIGOTS DEFINE THE TERMS.

John,
A few callers kept referring to Mr. Eich as being “FIRED”.
Mr. Eich “SELF TERMINATED”. There is a distinction of difference here.

Max_1

It happens to all of us…

Max_1

Thanks for allowing us to eat at the lunch counter…

Julien Pierre

Yes, Obama’s rhetoric on the issue sucked in 2008.

But donating to “Yes on Prop 8” is a step he never took.

He called Prop 8 “unnecessary”. That was way short of what he should have said.

How about if he donated to NAMBLA or the KKK, and refused to talk about it. Don’t you think there would have been some backlash ?

Julien Pierre

1) In 2008, Obama did not support Prop 8. He called Prop 8 “unnecessary”. That doesn’t sound like support to me.
2) In 2008, Obama did not donate to “Yes on prop 8”.
3) What many LGBT did was to stop using Mozilla after this news
4) Many others in the LGBT community also called for a boycott of Firefox That boycott fell under free speech.
5) Was the boycott justified ? That’s arguable.
Personally, I did not take part in said boycott. I did not uninstall Firefox from any of my 7 computers. As a 9 year contributor to the security code in Firefox, I did not want Mozilla Firefox to go into oblivion. I am still typing this in Firefox.

However, I supported the right of others to boycott it.

I was personally hoping for a statement of evolution on the part of Brendan Eich. He chose to resign instead of addressing the issue.

Moderator3

Right now,there is no reason to block your IP address.

Matthew

Aravosis got his tail kicked on Howie Kurtz’ show, and made a fool of himself (and demonstrated the weakness of his supposed arguments) by constantly interrupting the other guests. Then again, he gets destroyed every time he goes on tv. He’s just not very good in a debate, and isn’t all that bright.
Now hurry up and do your cute little routine, as you people always do, and make sure this i.p. address is blocked so that the closed-minded, intellectually timid souls on this website don’t have to read anything that makes them uncomfy.
It must be awful being terrified of other people’s opinions – and being terrified of substantive debate. Fascism is alive and well in America – you must be so proud, lefties.

Genetic input of father in a heterosexual marriage: 50%
Genetic input of father in a same-sex marriage: 50%

Camp X-Ray

Hello: Gays don’t want equal rights, they want special rights and that will spell their doom.

FLL

First, planting a fertilized egg into a woman’s uterus (which is actually called “surrogacy”) is not an evolutionary dead end because the sperm that fertilized the anonymous donor’s egg is the sperm from one of the two men who are part of that same-sex marriage that you’re so obsessed about. That father has just as much genetic input (50%) as the father in a heterosexual marriage.

And your hopes for the future… I think Christian interference in people’s sex lives will end a long time before genetic engineering. You’re a bible-based Christian, right? And I’ll sure bet you don’t feel like you’re in the driver’s seat in this country. Come on, share with the rest of the class.

Camp X-Ray

Hello: Your respones are way, way ‘too gay’. How do you sleep at night?

Camp X-Ray

Hello: More gay denial. Artifical insemination involves planting a fertilized egg by a male into a woman’s uterus. Homosexuality is an evolutionary dead end. Homosexuality has been asserted to be a genetic syndrome, an illness, that will be identified in the human genome. The sooner we identify the gene, alleles, that may cause it, the better.

FLL

Children are conceived by “married homosexuals” all the time, although you can claim that only one of the partners in a same-sex marriage is the child’s biological parent. You obviously live in a cave with no access to the outside world. Artificial insemination and surrogacy are very common today. And what if the girl next door to you gives birth, and she honestly doesn’t know who the father is? In that case, there is only one known biological parent, the same as with artificial insemination or surrogacy. That should satisfy your obsession with DNA transmission. Again. Checkmate.

Camp X-Ray

Hello: The concept of a ‘gay marriage’ is a perversion. It flies in the face of social norms. Marriage wll always be with a man and a woman with the goal of procreating, having children sharing their DNA. No homosexuals were ever, and never will be conceived by married homosexuals.

FLL

First, you have no way of knowing who on this blog has kids and who doesn’t. Second, even if you limit the argument to only passing on your own genes, your argument still doesn’t hold up. You’re deliberately ignoring artificial insemination, which is very commonly used by lesbian couples, and surrogacy, which is very commonly used among gay men. Checkmate.

Camp X-Ray

Hello: You have an unnatural lifestyle, an evolutionary dead end.

Camp X-Ray

Hello: They are all accurate, veritable facts.

FLL

First, marriage between a man and a woman is not a cause. It is a commitment that either works or doesn’t work… and in your case, under the very best of circumstances, it doesn’t work well.

FLL

I bet your country is proud of you… not.

FLL

From your comment above: I had no opinion about gays…

From your reply to my comment below: Though we all remember how homosexual men perpetuated the HIV/AIDS epidemic during the early 1980s and contaminated the nation’s blood supply and spread the terrible disease to innocent blood recipients, hemophiliacs. Homosexuals now want their abnormal lifestyle ‘married’ to, equal to traditional marriage? It’s lewd and disgusting livestyle. Yuck!

Pretty sorry-ass “writing style” you got there.

Camp X-Ray

Hello: Just another typical whining gay. I bet your parents are proud of you.

tbl92666

No opinion? Bull pucky. I count three on this page alone.

FLL

First, you’re not really replying to my comment, which was about the standards you have to use in order to use the word “fascist.” But let’s judge your comment on entertainment value. Your use of the word “lewd” is just amazingly old-fashioned and prudish, especially in the context of your whining. I think that in some ways, using “lewd” and “disgusting” together is a logical contradiction because “lewd,” as you use it, is (at least subliminally) a synonym for “sexy”—in other words, the opposite of “disgusting.” If you’re “Yuck!” was sincere, you’d avoid the subject (and images of the various sexual positions); instead, you obsess about the aforementioned subject (and probably images of the various sexual positions).

Camp X-Ray

Hello: You’re wrong, all he did was, years ago, contribute to the cause of traditional marriage. The concept of ‘gay marriage’ poisons, pollutes the holy sacrament of matrimony of the Catholic Church. Besides, homosexuals perpetuated the HIV/AIDS epidemic during the early 1980s. A fact the whining gay community ignores.

Camp X-Ray

Hello: Though we all remember how homosexual men perpetuated the HIV/AIDS epidemic during the early 1980s and contaminated the nation’s blood supply and spread the terrible disease to innocent blood recipients, hemophiliacs. Homosexuals now want their abnormal lifestyle ‘married’ to, equal to traditional marriage? It’s lewd and disgusting livestyle. Yuck!

lou

“I’m Jewish. If Brendan Eich had been a Holocaust-denier, but he treated Jews decently at his company, and he had not discriminated against Jews in any of his business dealings, I’d hold exactly the same position.”

But Eich affrimatively sought to discriminate against gays by giving money to a group that was promoting legislation to deny them rights not just espousing a personal opinion.

Camp X-Ray

Hello: I had no opinion about gays but after seeing the loud-mouthed, squeeky gay nerd John Avarious shout down his opponents on TV I will donate to any anti-gay, anti-homosexual marriage causes.

goulo

If you think no one was pissed and complaining here and at other progressive websites about Obama’s foot-dragging on gay rights, then you really weren’t paying attention.

1. Are you gay? do you even know any gay people? It doesn’t sound you’ve ever met any of the married gay couples I know.

2. I don’t know anyone who married to “stick it to the man”. (Do people still use that phrase?) They are married because they’ve been together for a long time and have been for all intents and purposes married for a long time but they or their friends have been in crisis situations in which they were treated as strangers because they weren’t married. Medical emergencies are a nightmare for couples who aren’t married. It’s even worse if the partner’s family is anti-gay. If you knew any gay couples you’d have heard horror stories about these situations.

3. -phobia as a suffix means both fear of and extreme dislike of. That comment is straight out of the religious right playbook. Yes, they are afraid of us. We blow the top off their own culture of hypocrisy.

4. You have a pretty bleak view of heterosexual marriage. Is that why straight people get married? I hope not. All the couples I know (straight and gay) got married because they wanted to build a life together. There are legal benefits and responsibilities that come with that of course. That’s the whole point.

5. Yes, a lot of gay people have open relationships. So do a lot of straight people. Gays tend to be more honest about that but at this point I don’t think it’s much more common for gay people to cheat than their straight counterpoints. Even if it is, the rate of heterosexual infidelity is so high (over 75%) that it’s really reaching to make that an argument against gay marriage.

Your arguments are all out of the right-wing talking points. It’s sad that you can’t see the obvious holes in all of them. Fortunately, the courts do which is why we keep winning the right for marriage equality.

4th Turning

“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

“There’s another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something does exist does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn’t exist.”

Vice President Rumsfeld…

Bill_Perdue

African Americans could not have passed prop 8 – they were too small a proportion of the population. Facts are good things, get some.

“In the caribbean, africa, uk black people don’t really appreciate gaydom, at least in public.” That cannot be true, given the large numbers of African descended LGBT folks in all those regions. In many of those areas homophobia and other social evils are a residue on English colonialism, just as they are in the US.

Moderator3

Your three post have demonstrated that you are a misogynist, racist, and homophobe. Bye.

Cmmdr Keen

i dont know about America, i’m from the UK, maybe things are different over there. In the caribbean, africa, uk black people don’t really appreciate gaydom, at least in public. muslims, lol, youre’ having a laugh.

i’m personally not a bigot but i don’t like re-defining words so maybe i would have been gainst this prop 8, i’m all for civil parterships between whoever. government always wins by taking taxes for silly reasons either way. welfare for single mothers is so high over here. it just enables irresponsible behaviour at the expense of someone else. anyway i don’t know the ins and outs of that bill but it’s unfair to label people bigots just because of their personal values and the way they treat language

i’m not sure what state it was in this prop8, but if any black people bothered voting for anything other than obama lol, most of them would have voted against anything to do with gays. they would have been more bigoted than me. obviously we are talking generally, there will always be a few gays like kanye west in the mix who would pander to the lady gaga crowd for money.

Cmmdr Keen

i don’t know about all that, sounds very fluffy. if you want to get into the nitty gritty then my opinion is that obama himself is gay but just like in 2008 he still believes in 2014 that marriage should be “between a man and woman” as most rational people. he got railroaded into marriage (to a woman) as he was being groomed for higher politics.

i also suggest that most of the modern gay activist movement, you know the very loud ones that like to show off a lot and make it known that they are gay are compensating. these were the kids at school that were the bullies, the true homophobes. they actualy feared themselves being gay so used to call others the f-word and beat them up. but now that it is ok to be gay in the modern world openly these same bullies just started attacking different people to feed their ego.

of course to me a phobia means fear and i dont think most people labelled as homophobes fear gay people at all. they don’t breed so what’s to fear, they will die out is most people’s opinions, just a temporary nuisance.

after all marriage comes from root mater, matriarch ie mother, ie producing a child through a nuclear setup. it is very odd that in today’s day especially in the west the laws against polygamy are so harsh but a marriage without the core tenet of marriage is perfectly acceptable.

if you ask most gay people they do not like civil unions even if all the laws were exactly the same. it’s a matter of “sticking it to the man” or revenge, or teenage rebellion against the system or a way to try and force acceptance from their parents and peers. it’s very strange.

if you ask any non-gay man what he thinks of marriage he knows it’s something he is forced into doing because of society and pressure. he has no real benefits from the way the government has set it up. women have many more rights over children and money and property. however you ask a woman and sure some dreamt of a wedding when kids but as soon as they hit their 30s it’s mostly about money. 70% end in divorce. the fact that gay people are choosing this government intrusion in terms of civil unions is laughable in itself but then hijacking the term marriage is cause for belly laughs.

most gay people know it’s a joke and just politics, infidelity rates between gays are said to be higher than non-gay, but it would be nice to see divorce rates lower for gay couples to prove me wrong but i won’t hold my breath

thanks for listening

Bill_Perdue

The ideas that African American christers are more homophobic than Euro American christers and bigots is absurd. And racist. The record is clear, Black christers and bigots did not pass Prop 8, white christens and bigots did.

Cmmdr Keen

it’s only bigotry if a white man says that marriage should be between a “man and woman”, if a muslim or a black person says it then it’s ok because their opinions are more valid. i don’t know what world you are living in but it’s 2014. you have to know what’s up

Bill_Perdue

He opposed marriage equality and turned the tide against us, insuring the passage of Prop 8. “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage.” MTV He went on to oppose prop 8 on tactical grounds, saying it was unnecessary. What he meant was that Democrat Bill Clintons DOMA was in place and a constitutional amendment wasn’t need. http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1598407/did-barack-obama-answer-your-question.jhtml

Homophobia, like sexism and racism, is not a binary (either/or) proposition. You can be a little bit homophobic or a lot homophobic or anywhere along that spectrum. His position in 2008 was indeed a little bit homophobic. Not as homophobic as people who opposed repealing DADT and who opposed passing ENDA (both of which he was for). But yes, Obama is now less homophobic than he was 6 years ago. Or rather, his official positions are less homophobic than they were.

Cmmdr Keen

obama thinks marriage should be “between a man and a woman”, at least back in 2008, but he is not homophobic

Don’t know if anyone has seen this. HoneyMaid came under attack for its ads which featured gay parents, interracial parents, etc. They received over 1 million negative response and instead of giving an apology and pandering to the right and pulling the ads they did something very positive. Not everyone is cowed by the religious bigots.

Calling progressives “fascists” for not supporting anti-gay politicians and policies is definitely trending among bigots. This is a case where bigots are imitative. They hear Putin’s propaganda machine in Russia claim that if you don’t support Putin, you’re a fascist. The bigots in the U.S. just extrapolate that name-calling strategy to any case in which a bigot is reaping the consequences of his hate speech, such as the decision of Mozilla not to let Eich head their company as CEO. You’re going to run into this meme a lot from the bigot crowd in coming days: “You’re a fascist if you’re not anti-gay.” It’s just an extension of the victim psychology that bigots are adopting these days because they are now on the losing side, and they know that theirs is a lost cause.

2karmanot

What a woman. Just reading her name makes me celebrate!

2karmanot

Even Pugs are cute when puppies.

2karmanot

Because Benghazi

NotConvinced

Ben is a weasely little shitheel working for a hate based website.

2karmanot

“You cannot hold one man’s past against him, and give a pass to the other.” Wanna bet? Stand back and learn grasshopper.

Monophylos Fortikos

If Mozilla decided to sack Eich because they didn’t like his ties or how they parted his hair, shouldn’t you be fine with that? I mean, free enterprise, capitalism, private corporations should do whatever they like, all the rest of it–don’t you just worship all that shit?

Why should I trust you? I do not know whether Obama’s previous or current position is his “personal belief”, nor frankly do I care. I only care that he is now in favor of equal rights. The result is the same for gay people whether he really believes it or not. Similarly, I do not care about Eich’s beliefs. The problem is his action by donating to a bigoted political campaign.

I see the opposite. He is NOT supporting Prop 8 or any constitutional amendments. He says that clearly. He also is not supporting same sex marriage there either. I remember this clearly and was disappointed but as the primary candidate in either party in 2008 for gay marriage was Dennis Kucinich Obama is who I after much consideration chose to support.

This is no way is the equivalent of Eich’s position unless you can find a check from the Obama’s to the Prop 8 campaign. You still lied.

4th Turning

Understood your point. I’m, as you can probably tell by now, put off by that whole you-lie-no-you-lie kind of exchange. Found the 1996 date quite by chance doing a little fact/checking of my own and was rather surprised. Wondered what else he was up to in ’96 and found this:

Obama continued teaching constitutional law part-time at the University of Chicago Law School as he had done as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996 and as a Senior Lecturer from 1996–2008.

I think we also agree on the carved-in-stone dictum that their guys are
cowards. Our guys are brilliant, courageous,-and good-looking.

The point I was making is that Obama did NOT support Prop 8. The opposite is true actually making it a flat out lie. Obama did try to avoid the marriage issue in 2008. If you want to make the argument that he was cowardly to do so, I won’t argue with you. But I am happy with his current position and he did nothing to make the issue worse (unlike the Clintons).

mtblaze

Perhaps it looks that way because the American people cannot boycott the American government as easily as they can a private business and because Obama and his administration ended up on the right side of both issues?

If you boycott a business because of its beliefs (which you claim you do), then why is it egregious to ask others to boycott it as well (which puts more ooomph behind your boycott)? I think the hysteria you talk about shows when you describe the actions of people who boycotted Mozilla. The power of the consumer is a touchstone of Capitalist thinking regarding market “corrections”. Why do capitalists cry whenever it is used?

4th Turning

The issue seems like ancient history now. Thought this might be interesting to add
to the discussion.

And what do you think people were doing? None of us has to power to force Mozilla to fire anyone. I just switched browsers. Eich resigned and internal sources claim there’s more to it than the boycott threat. So more lies from you.

TonyCap

I don’t understand why the left was so upset Brenden Eich donated to support Prop 8. In 2008 Barak Obama supported Prop 8 and defended DOMA in court and defended DADT. Seem hypocritical to hold one accountable and not the other. He simply donated to a cause he supported. He didn’t kill gays. In this country, people have the right to support causes, even those others do not agree with, and they should not lose their job for it. This does not empower the gay movement, it sets it back. The proper response would be to simply not use Mozilla. That’s what I do. If I find out the owner of a business supports agendas I do not like, I simply do not use their product. I do not get hysterical and try to destroy a person with opposing views. I guess hysteria is part of the liberal brain disorder.

Tom in Lazybrook

Touche.

PeteWa

haha, I just meant that line in particular.

benb

In the 90s I worked for a high flyin’ joint that did websites for celebrities and major companies. All the IT guys were gay; all the artists were straight. There was even a TS website designer (from Romania) working there. First time I ever worked in a place were I was totally out…my coworkers were gay…my boss was gay. That experience taught me—in a way I had to experience–that nobody cared about my sexual orientation at work. Not important.

To me, if it is then something’s wrong. There’s something wrong with Eich and there’s definitely something wrong with this guy Shapiro (this guy’s either self-loathing or a sadist). Anyone who touts Ideology over Real Life deserves Special Scrutiny.

SkippyFlipjack

Shapiro reminds me of Shooter McGavin’s line in “Happy Gilmore”: “I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast!” “You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?”

I’ll slip in another big thanks for your ability to do the articles and speak to the media. (I’ve listened to BBC Worldwide on shortwave for many years. When a certain President demanded that broadcasts to North America be discontinued I discovered that many of their programs are available as podcasts, sometimes including book readings and plays. Sometimes the links to the podcasts aren’t easy to find, it seems to depend on how the program page is accessed.)

4th Turning

“…One principle must be absolute for the SS man: we must be honest, decent, loyal and comradely to members of our own blood and to no one else. What happens to the Russians, what happens to the Czechs, is a matter of utter indifference to me. Such good blood of our own kind as there may be among the nations we shall acquire for ourselves, if necessary, by taking away the children and bringing them up among us. Whether the other people live in comfort or perish of hunger interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture. Whether or not 10,000 Russian women collapse from exhaustion while digging a tank ditch interests me only in so far as the tank ditch is completed for Germany. We shall never be rough or heartless where it is not necessary; that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude to animals, will also adopt a decent attitude to these human animals, but it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and to bring them ideals. I shall speak to you here with frankness on a very grave matter. Amoung ourselves, it should be mentioned quite frankly, and yet we will never speak of it publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30, 1934 (Night of the Long Knives – an internal purge of the Nazi party) to do our duty as we were ordered, to stand our comrades against a wall and shoot them, and we never spoke about it and we will never speak about it. It was a matter of natural tact that is alive in us, thank God, that we never discussed it. Each of us shuddered and yet each of us knew clearly that next time he would do it again if it were an order and if it were necessary.
I am referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. This is one of the things that is easily said: “The Jewish people are going to be exterminated.” That’s what every Party member says, “Sure, it’s in our program, elimination of the Jews – extermination – it’ll be done!” And then they all come along, 80 million worthy Germans and each one has his one decent Jew. Of course, the others are swine, but this one, he is a first-rate Jew! Of all those who talk like that, not one has seen it happen, not one has had to go through with it. Most of you know what it means to see 100 corpses lying together, or 500, or 1000. To have stuck it out and at the same time – apart from exceptions caused by weakness – to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and shall never be written, for we know how difficult it would be for us here today – under bombing raids and the hardships and deprivations of war – if we were still to have Jews in every city as secret saboteurs, agitators and inciters. If the Jews were still lodged in the body of the German nation, we would probably by now have reached the stage of 1916-17.
The wealth they possessed we took from them. I gave a strict order, which has been carried out by SS Obergruppenfuhrer Pohl, that this wealth will of course be turned over to the Reich in it’s entirety. We have taken none of it for ourselves. Individuals who have erred will be punished in accordance with the order given by me at the start – threatening that anyone who takes as much as a single Mark of this money is a dead man. A number of SS men – they are not very many, committed this offense, and they shall die. There will be no mercy. We had a moral right, we had the duty towards our people to destroy this people that wanted to destroy us. But we do not have the right to enrich ourselves by as much as a fur, or a watch, by one Mark or a cigarette or anything else. We do not want, in the end, because we destroyed a bacillus, to be infected by this bacillus and to die. I will never stand by and watch while even a small rotten spot develops or takes hold. Wherever it may form we will together burn it away….”

I think this might be some new form of Godwin’s law, where rather than bringing up how the other guy is “like nazis,” Shapiro thought it would be a good idea to show the GOP as sympathetic TO nazis. Political neophyte, or simply politically naive as hell. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

Hell, I cringed when I saw that. I was recently reading some articles about the horrors at Babi Yar in Kiev, and came across a bunch of comments by holocaust deniers. What a bunch of awful, awful sh*tbags, pardon my French. Shapiro may have opened a can of worms.

You know every Republican cringed when he said that. Who would say that, besides the ACLU?

SkippyFlipjack

On the plus side, Shapiro is the one making this analogy: Prop 8 supporter:gays::Holocaust denier:Jews. That suggests a great question to ask of our GOP reps: Do you agree with Ben Shapiro that people who are against gay marriage are the same as Holocaust deniers?

I was invited to appear on the show to represent Marriage Equality USA, but the invitation came so late I wasn’t able to do so. It sounds like it was pretty poorly managed, so in the end I’m not particularly sorry I couldn’t do it.

Thom Watson

Shapiro is also conflating belief — Holocaust denial, personally believing marriage should only be between a man and a woman — with action — funding a constitutional amendment that literally stripped civil rights from fellow Americans. Had Eich merely held a personal belief about marriage, he would not necessarily have been a bad fit for Mozilla. Acting on that belief, and putting the feelings of homophobic Indonesians above those of actual gay Americans working for him, and being unwilling to say he would not take the same action were the opportunity to present himself, while representing a company that repeatedly states that diversity is one of its central corporate values and principles, that shows he’s a bad fit for Mozilla CEO. Actually, what finally got me off the fence about Eich — I was very ambivalent at first — was his creepy and practically Messianic interview with CNET, in which he implied that Mozilla alone can save the open Internet, and that he alone can save Mozilla, an interview he gave while this crisis was underway; that alone showed that he has extremely poor judgment, is arrogant to the extreme (ok, that alone isn’t necessarily uncommon among CEOs), and was not the right person to be the public face of Mozilla.

Of course, I happen to think Shapiro is wrong even taking him at face value — public Holocaust denial likely would find a CEO removed from his position in a way mere public disapproval of gay people would not.

bkmn

Hey Ben – go ask Sheldon Adelson if it would be ok to have a Holocaust denier in charge of a major company.

I had a feeling… Sorry, wish I could listen to the interview, but I’m heavy in work yet today. I guess the old saying is still true, that a lie travels halfway round the world while the truth is still putting on its trousers.

In generaly, I have a respect for the Beeb, but all too often like many other media outlets, they fall into false equivalencies and don’t refute obvious falsehoods.

Well. I was supposed to come on the show at 1:10. It started at 1. By 1:30, I was so ticked off that they just left me hanging that I hung up (I was sitting there listening the entire time, but no one bothered adding me in). They called a few minutes later, apologized, and I got to join in the last 10 minutes or so. He made the claim like 20 minutes before, so I have no recollection at this point if I was able to sneak it in. At that point there’d be so much obfuscation.

Considering the ass-kissing Gov. Chris Christie was forced to do at Edelson’s “Who Loves Me and My Money Spooge-a-palooza” in Vegas, when Christie referred to the Palestinian Occupied Territories as…well, the ‘occupied territories’ — I rather doubt any number of GOP conservatives would fail to object to a Holocaust denier.

Sure, some like Pat Buchanan wouldn’t have a problem, nor those who when they say “Judeo-Christian” actually only mean the part after the hyphen. But the rest of ’em? Nah. They’d squeal and howl and finger-wag and call for their own boycotts.

And oddly enough, this is one of the areas in which progressives and conservatives actually agree: That Holocaust-denying is usually code for anti-Semitism, and admiring Nazis and their fascist, genocidal ways.

I guess the big question, John, is were you permitted or able to refute Shapiro’s lie about where the Prop 8 donation information came from? And to point out that the claim was a falsehood?

p.s. Why does seeing Ben Shapiro always make me hear the theme song from “The Omen”?

kevinbgoode

“During the show, Shapiro also claimed, incredibly (and incorrectly), that the federal Internal Revenue Service “leaked” the fact of Eich’s Prop 8 donation, which Shapiro claims (again incorrectly) was “anonymous.”

Apparently, making claims which are patently incorrect is what being an “editor” is all about in Breitbart Land.

I agree with Shapiro that conservatives (of his ilk) would be fine with Holocaust deniers.

Tom in Lazybrook

This.

There are literally over 100,000 education jobs where Gays and Gay supportive persons cannot be employed. There are over 10,000 taxpayer funded social work jobs where Gays and Gay supportive persons cannot be employed. There are literally thousands of hospital administrative jobs not open to Gays or Gay supportive persons.

Why is somehow more acceptable for Liberty University to fire a Janitor for being Gay (or a basketball coach), Baylor to fire a History teacher, Catholic Charities (or the Salvation Army) to fire a social worker implementing a taxpayer funded grant, or an Adventist Hospital to fire a Hospital Administrator for being Gay (or Jewish for that matter) because they say the person is not aligned with the mission of that private employer, but NOT okay if a private company like Mozilla fires a CEO for taking stands inconsistent with the company’s culture and mission?

Let be clear. Being the Janitor at Liberty University isn’t a theological job. Neither is teaching Math at Baylor. Or Running an Adventist Hospital. Or fulfilliing a social work job for the Salvation Army paid for with taxpayer funds.